Jochen Bauch

A cooperative virtual prototyping system for mechatronic solution elements based assembly

In order to catch up with the steps of rapidly changing markets, the product development period of modern mechatronic products has to be as short as possible. However, mechatronic engineering is based on the interaction of mechanical engineering, electronic engineering, and computer science. Therefore, inefficient communication between the engineers who come from different domains becomes a manifest obstruction for accelerating the design of mechatronic products. Nevertheless, innovations in the field of virtual prototyping offer some potential solutions to this problem. In this paper, we present a cooperative virtual prototyping system, which utilizes the concept of solution elements and virtual reality techniques to facilitate assembling and analyzing virtual mechatronic prototypes in a multi-disciplinary workgroup.

A Night Drive Simulator for the Evaluation of a Predictive Advanced Front Lighting System

Summary form only given. This paper introduces a Virtual Reality-based night drive simulator that visualizes the complex lighting characteristics of automotive headlights in high detail and in real-time on a PC-based system. The user drives a simulated vehicle over a virtual test track at night, the vehicles motion directly influences the lighting direction of headlights, and the effect of the vehicle dynamics on the lighting can be evaluated directly in the simulator. The system is connected to the control algorithms of a P-AFS component to control the headlights swivelling for a close-to-reality simulation of a P-AFS based lighting system during the simulated night drive. That way, good combinations of the design variables can be found, based on virtual night drives in the simulator system, and the number of real test drives can be reduced significantly. Promising combinations of the design variables then can be validated in a test vehicle during a real test drive a night.

A Virtual Reality-Based Night Drive Simulator for the Evaluation of a Predictive Advanced Front Lighting System

Modern automobiles contain more and more mechatronical components to support the task of driving. Such mechatronical components are, e.g., an anti-lock braking system (ABS) and an electronic stability program (ESP) to support driving safety, or a predictive advanced front lighting system P-AFS) to enhance the lighting capabilities of a vehicle on a winding road. P-AFS uses GPS-data to locate the vehicle’s position plus digital map data to predict the curvature of the road in front of the vehicle. Based on this, P-AFS predicts the road scenario and swivels the front headlights accordingly. That way, the headlights follow the road’s curvature and optimally illuminate the road in front of the vehicle. To design, evaluate, and optimize the control algorithms within the electronic control unit (ECU) of the P-AFS component, up to 30 design variables need to be adjusted and tuned to ensure an optimal response of the system to the current road scenario. For this task, numerous time-consuming and costly test drives at night are necessary. This paper introduces a Virtual Reality-based night drive simulator that visualizes the complex lighting characteristics of automotive headlights in high detail and in real-time on a PC-based system. The user drives a simulated vehicle over a virtual test track at night, the vehicle’s motion directly influences the lighting direction of headlights, and the effect of the vehicle dynamics on the lighting can be evaluated directly in the simulator. The system is connected to the control algorithms of a P-AFS component to control the headlights swivelling for a close-to-reality simulation of a P-AFS based lighting system during the simulated night drive. That way, good combinations of the design variables can be found, based on virtual night drives in the simulator system, and the number of real test drives can be reduced significantly. Promising combinations of the design variables then can be validated in a test vehicle during a real test drive a night.© 2006 ASME

Interdisciplinary knowledge sharing in solution elements based virtual prototyping of mechatronic systems

A typical mechatronic product includes mechanical parts, software techniques, electrical and electronic components. This interdisciplinary character significantly increases the complexities of mechatronic products. Therefore, inefficient communication between the engineers who come from different domains becomes the main challenge that the designer should face to. However, innovations in the field of virtual prototyping offer potential solutions to this problem. In this paper, we present our solution of sharing knowledge within a multi-disciplinary work group by using the concept of solution elements and virtual reality techniques in our virtual mechatronic prototyping system.

A solution elements based cooperative assembly system for mechatronic virtual prototyping

In order to catch up with the steps of rapidly changing markets, the product development period of modern mechatronic products has to be as short as possible. However, mechatronic engineering is based on the interaction of mechanics, electronics, control engineering and software. Therefore, inefficient communication between the engineers who come from different disciplines becomes a manifest obstruction for accelerating mechatronic products design. Furthermore, with increasingly complex mechatronic products, this problem becomes even worse. Nevertheless, innovations in the field of virtual prototyping offer potential solutions to this problem. We present a concept for a cooperative assembly and analysis system, which utilizes virtual reality techniques to facilitate virtual prototyping in a multi-disciplinary workgroup. We also introduce a prototype implementation of the concept.

A method for interactively composing mechatronic prototypes in virtual environment

Virtual Prototyping (VP) technology has been widely used to reduce the cost in the development of modern products. However, a typical mechatronic product includes the components from different engineering domains and its complexity keeps on increasing. Therefore, it becomes a great challenge to efficiently achieve VP of mechatronic products. A solution presented in this paper chooses Solution Elements (SE) as the basic design component, which encapsulates various engineering expertise. In addition, a conceptual model of ports and joints are created to compose those virtual components into mechatronic prototypes in a virtual environment. To reveal the achievement of our solution, this paper will concretely explicate (1) the definition of the conceptual models of SE, ports and joints; (2) the procedure and the matching guide in doing the system composition; (3) some interaction and visualisation issues to SE, ports and joints and (4) how team work is supported in the implementation work.